


i will always skip for him

by orphan_account



Category: South Park
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, OCD, One Shot, Two Shot, red shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-21 05:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Tweek is in a much better place than he was when he was younger. Of course "getting over" something is never as simple as it seems.





	1. i will always skip for him

"When I was a kid, I had this naive idea that the universe always somehow eventually compensates you. Like, if somebody grew up privileged, it would be harder for them to be generous and they'd be judged more harshly in heaven, or if somebody was born dirt-poor in east Africa, they'd have nothing to be greedy over, and in turn they'd be more likely to get into heaven. So to me, everything happened for a reason, and everyone and their existences were equal sooner or later. Then I saw this documentary about pirates in Somalia. The guy being interviewed- he said he killed his brother for a loaf of bread. I remember watching, and just thinking,

_"How is he more likely to get into heaven now?"_

"I've spent a good part of my life doing remedial to horrible rituals for a voice inside my head that wasn't even real, and then years afterwards completely obsessed with how I was obsessive, and all the things I'd done, and all the things I'd thought, and all the things I'd heard, and all the things that I could have done, and all the things I should have done, and all the time that I had lost, all for jack-fucking-shit.

"People act like illness is supposed to build character, or change you for the better, or make you wiser, or smarter, or stronger, or at the very least give you a good story, but the truth is that it fucks up everything you are, and everything you were going to be, and it holds you back in time and it hurts your friends, and it hurts your family, and it sure-as-hell hurts you.

"Before the worst of everything, my average in math was a 110. _A 110, Craig_. I barely even have any of the problems I used to have anymore, but I'll be damned if I have any idea if I passed or failed math last semester.

"But I had an all-knowing voice that may or may not have been God, but I had to do what it said because I just could never really be sure - inside of my head that threatened me with my worst nightmares, that used all of my weaknesses and secrets to blackmail me every hour, every minute, every second for years.

"And it kind of just messed me up.

"I used to think that somehow, all of my lost time would be worth something. Now I know that it won't. And sure, in some ways, I'm smarter because of everything that went down.

"But in most ways I'm not.

"Craig.

"You're never going to get back the time that you're losing."

He's fiddling with the string of his blue chullo hat, looking anywhere but my eyes. And honestly, I'm relieved. After spending night after night for years, lying awake, staring at my ceiling, crafting and developing my grand-OCD-anxiety-monologue, years of dreaming and imagining delivering it to anybody - to my mother, to my father, to Clyde, to Token, to Jimmy, to _Craig -_  it's fallen flat and short like it does every time I can muster enough guts to give it. I can never say what I mean. Maybe I don't really know what I mean. My stuttering, tripping over words, and cracking voice made it hardly what I had imagined. Also, I'm pretty sure that I might be crying.

He didn't interrupt me, even once. I think he knew, but he didn't actually  _know._ I mean he still doesn't, because no matter how hard or how many times I try, I'll never be able to explain it to it's full extent. I just don't have it in me.

Deep down, I think I always knew that Craig was the person I was supposed to tell. I gave the speech under his situation's pretense, but half-way through, the comparison got lost on me. Maybe I should feel bad, making this all about me. But I'm just so tired of feeling bad about things all the time.

I thought, after I finally gave my speech, I would feel relieved. People talk about a big weight coming off your shoulders after admitting something, about how much shame people with secrets don't realize they're even carrying. But all I feel now is stupid and overdramatic. Clyde's mom died when he was _ten_. I'm just a whiny, privileged teen with no real problems.

I'm picking at my fingernails like I always do when I get nervous. My hands are trembling, hard. Trying to get them still, I press them onto the straps of my backpack, but they only end up shaking the straps, making everything more painfully obvious.

So Craig stands there in the snow, the dark of his blue jacket like a void in the middle all of the bright, pure white. And I stand there across from him, shaking from the cold or from the anxiety, or probably a mixture of both.

We're around at the back of our high school at 7:30 am, huddled under the small metal awning where the emo kids cut class to smoke, developing colds in the cold. Right about now the snow is beginning to fall particularly hard, and the wind carries it diagonally onto the pavilion, onto us. School doesn't start until 8:30, so save a few teachers and custodians, Craig and I are the only ones here. I'm already soaked to the bone.

Bored, uncomfortable, and wanting something to occupy myself, I nudge the ice of a frozen discarded cigarette into the concrete of the school with the toe of my boot. Craig's eyes follow it, but in the sort of way where I can tell he's not actually seeing it.

When I manage to crack the last of the ice, the entire thing crumbles, and I'm left with nothing but grey snow and a wet boot. I attempt to clean my them in the uncontaminated snow, but it kind of just spreads the mess. Ever the neat-freak, Craig makes a face, and then he finally speaks, and I'm so relieved I want to cry.

"Do you want to skip today?" he asks.

But I will always skip for him and he knows it.


	2. she's still worried

On a street with narrow sidewalks and tightly constructed suburban-style-two-stories, the glow of my house is consuming. Everywhere else is blue - black even, but each room in my house radiates the warm yellow-orange of fluorescent lighting, eating away at the calmness resonating from the other homes.

It is one of the most wasteful things I have ever seen - nobody in my home has ever touched a light switch. Even the automatic light that shines when our pantry opens is visible through the front window, blinking just faintly enough for me to know that I will have to change it this week. Maybe that's the one thing about my home - and my life - that has been constant: everything is always on. My parents are lucky I didn't end up afraid of the dark.

I kill the ignition and pause, staring blankly at something. I don't know.

The front door opens, bringing on a whole new ray of brightness, and it takes me a few moments before I am able to pull eyes away from the nothing they're staring at. My mom steps onto our doormat looking concerned, her face as pink as her peach robe. Giving myself three seconds and leaving on two, I open the door and trek forward, forcing a slight leap in my steps.  _I am in a hurry to see you, Mom. I didn't mean to be out this late._

My parents didn't let me get my license until months after I turned seventeen, and even though they claim confidence, I can tell they're still a little iffy. All the cars behind, the cars in front, the cars to the sides of me - they were enough to leave fingernail imprints on the leather of my dad's steering wheel the first time I tried to learn. I was always thinking:

_What was that? Oh my god, it was a person, it was a person, wasn't it. Oh my god, you just ran over a person, you killed a person. You have to go back and check, you have to go back and check to see if it was a person. Oh my god, you hit a person._

Or

_See the car behind you? They've been following you for a while now, haven't they? They've been there since you pulled off of the highway. See that traffic light up there? The car in front of you is working with the car behind you so they can sandwich you in there. They're probably trapping you so they can mug or kidnap you or sell you to some human-trafficking ring. It's what all the gangs have started doing: It's all over the news. Take the next turn to get rid of them. No - the next turn._

Or

_All it would take is a little turning of this wheel and you will have killed yourself and the person in the next lane. I mean, you thought of it, so you must want it. If you don't pull over right now, you're going to do it. Pull over. Pull over. Pull over. Pull over. Pull over. You're going to do it. Pull over._

And it was physical, too. Even riding along in the car, my twitching would take off like crazy, to the point where I couldn't even stay still long enough to see the road. A car would drive too close and my head would snap to the opposite side so abruptly and sharply that my neck would be sore for days. My mom's radio would play too loudly and I would start to feel the walls of the car, the pressure of the air, the weight of my own skin wrapped around and closing in on me and I'd just panic. My mother would have to pull over, a horrible combination of worried and annoyed, and I would rush out of the car before it even came to a stop, panting with one hand on my knee, one hand clinging to the paper bag my parents always kept for me in the glove department, thinking,

_She hates you, she hates you, she hates you, she hates you, she hates you, oh god, she hates you. She would be better off without you, she hates you, she hates you, she hates you._

But it's been years since the worst of it, and I can control most of that stuff now, even if it takes abnormally slow, heavy breathing. And I understand their apprehensiveness, I really do. It's just that it doesn't exactly inspire confidence on my part.

My mom doesn't move from the doorway to let me inside, even as snow sinks through my jeans. Instead, she stands there, staring, unmoving. Uncomfortable, I twist my car keys between my fingers, pressing the groves into my palms until they make indentions. Her lips are pursed. I am pretty sure she is still worried about me.

"You didn't show up to work today."

Maybe, if it was some other time, I would protest that the amount of customers at a redneck-mountain-town-rundown-coffee-shop on a Tuesday afternoon barely garners enough work for one person, let alone three. Tonight I'm too tired to say anything more than,

"I know."

I can see the debate going on behind her eyes, deciding whether to press for more and risk a Tweek-style meltdown or to just let me in. Finally, she sighs, sinking in her posture and twisting to the side so that the walkway is open. The pantry light flickers some more.

I think she knows that I didn't get drunk or get high or go out racing the car or partying it up or something, and I think she knows that I wouldn't have missed work unless something happened. But I also think she knows that people walking behind me makes my skin crawl and that I'll have to walk in front of her to get into the house and this is her version of a compromise. I stare at her, and she stares back at me. Keys still in my hands, I lock my car, and the sudden beep makes both of us jump a little.

"Goodnight," I say, keeping my voice light, maybe as an apology.

"Night." My mom matches my tone, but she watches me step into our house warily, hugging her robe shut tightly. Halfway up the stairs, I spin around.

"Don't forget to lock the do-"

"I already did."

She's smiling, because before I would have never walked all the way to the stairs having not checked to see if the door was locked. I would be down in the kitchen, checking to see if the windows were locked, and then I'd check them again, because I never knew if someone could have snuck up behind me and unlocked them without my knowing.

Tonight, though, I trudge up to my room, too tired to even care that there might be murderers in my closet, not bothering to take off my boots as I slump into my bed. I pull out my phone and send a single text:

 **ME: [1:32 a.m.]** i made it ok

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> combining old fics. I guess this is just the quiet-loud life of tweek now


	3. the real reason i'm drunk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for an (abstract) mention of rape

Kissing.

Parting my lips, drawing my tongue back and forth, an upper lip, a bottom lip, a twist of my head so that my nose is on his nose’s other side, my hands on his face or around his back or on his leg, holding him tighter, pulling me in closer. Moving on to his jaw, his neck, somewhere besides his lips. 

It’s a pattern, a pleasant, familiar rhythm; one that reminds me of the sensation you get when you’re laying in bed after a long day at an amusement park or a river, the sensation that allows you to still feel like you’re in motion, even when everything else is still. It kind of lulls all your senses, anxieties and inhibitions away, hypnotizing you in the best way possible.

Then again, this all might just be because I’m shit-faced out of my fucking mind.

Luckily for me, so is Craig.

We’re on his bed, or maybe mine maybe, or possibly on one of our carpets.

_God, I don’t even fucking know._

We like to get wasted together - alone - like the losers we are, playing drinking games to stupid movies about aliens, or space, or artsy European homosexuals. And if it's possible, all three.

_Take a shot everytime an alien is green._

_Take a shot everytime the protagonist is the only being that can save the galaxy._

_Take a shot everytime the script doesn’t understand physics._

_Take a shot everytime a gay is depressed._

And I’m drunk.

I can’t exactly remember whether the movie we were watching was about aliens or gayness. Admittedly, we didn't last very long on this one. I think I can still hear it playing in the background; there are a lot of noises going on — the air conditioner, our breathing, our kissing, the sound of a car driving by outside — but they’ve all kind of melted away and I can’t focus enough recognize anything anymore.

 I guess it doesn’t really matter. Things are pretty fucking gay, now, anyways.

 I think the warmth is the thing I like the most — the burning in the back of my throat, in the pit of my stomach, the heat between his lips, and on his cheeks, and under his shirt — probably in my cheeks now, too. It reminds me of coffee, the way I used to get my warmth when I was younger, except without the jitter running through my arms. I stopped drinking it religiously a long time ago -and I suppose alcohol isn’t exactly the healthiest of substitutes - but for now, I’m just allowing myself to sink deeper and deeper into the warmth.

We’re shifting our weights, rolling a little, adjusting, and I think I can feel the softness of his carpet under me. I allow my fingers to slide under Craig's hat and through his hair, slipping his hat off in the process. He doesn’t seem to notice. I love Craig's hat - at this point, it’s become almost symbolic of him, _Craig_ wouldn’t be _Craig_ without that stupid hat - but I love it even more when we’re alone together, and Craig’s hat is off. I like to think of it as something private, a special vulnerability Craig only lets out around me. Besides, his hair is so soft.

Nobody would ever believe me, but Craig is really soft.

My past self would have been horrified had it been able to see me now.

I was young - nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen - and I was convinced I would be horribly raped and then murdered. I can’t even really remember what it was, but to me, being raped, or having sex, really, was the worst fate a person could suffer — worse than death, or the death of everyone you loved, or torture — only one small step up from hell. I think it was something about fear, or purity, and heaven, and hell.

I think it was something in the trespasses a person could make mentally through a gesture so physical.

I would watch documentary after documentary about sex rings where young Vietnamese teenagers would come to America for a better life only to be in perpetual “debt” to those who brought them there, their bodies exploited and abused and their mind lost to drugs. And then I would watch documentaries about freak situations: little girls kidnapped and trapped inside some pedophile’s home, forgotten to most the world and eventually their own parents, doomed to be continually raped, abused, and neglected. Sometimes the people in the documentaries had been killed. Sometimes they had killed themselves. The ones who were alive were already dead.

I stopped watching those documentaries, not because they were scaring me, but because I was afraid to contribute to the senseless sensationalization of those type of situations. Looking back, I don’t think I was ever really sensationalizing. I just wanted to feel close to my own thoughts.

So distinctly I remember this day - I must have been around eleven. I was playing basketball in my driveway alone, shooting hoops through a crappy plastic hoop that hooked onto our garage door. South Park is a small town, so even at eleven, I was able to recognize nearly everybody and everybody’s car. That day, there was one particular car that I didn’t recognize: an old, crappy-looking white dodge pick-up driving slowly past my house.The first time it drove by, I hardly noticed them. I saw them stop at the stop sign at the end of our street, pausing for a while, and then move on to the next street. I considered they might be a tourist, lost in one of the wonders of the Rocky Mountains. The second time they passed, I was watching for them. I heard the truck’s engine behind me and turned around to catch the driver’s eye - a white, redneck looking  man, probably around his fifties. License plate number BP9-32BH. Of course, me seeing him meant he saw me as well. He must have seen that I was young, he must have seen that I was alone, he must have seen where I lived. The third time he drove by, I was out of his site, my back pressed against the side of our garage, my heart hammering in my chest so loud I could swear I could hear it in my ears.

I stopped playing outside after that.

It was 5 pm when I crawled in the little crook in between my mattress and my wall, shaking, but somehow frozen all at the same time, my head and toes hidden under a blanket. I wanted to call the police, give them his license plate number, tell my parents what was going on, but I was frozen silent, and even if I could talk, I knew they wouldn’t believe me.

I must have laid there in that exact same position for hours, completely paralyzed in fear, knowing, just _knowing_ , knowing like I knew my name was Tweek, and 2 + 2 = 4, and water is wet that I would get taken that night. In my mind, I knew that I would get taken, raped, and murdered that night.

 And then I accepted it.

 And then I accepted I would die in the worst way possible.

 And then I waited for it.

 And then I woke up in the same spot the next morning.

I guess he had just been lost, after all. The thing was, it was hard to go on living like normal when you had just been completely convinced of your eminent, brutal murder the night before. No matter how many times things turned out okay, I repeated that ritual over and over again, until death meant almost nothing to me.

But now I’m here.

And I’m kissing Craig.

And I’m kind of proud of myself.

There’s the desire in me, just as strong as anybody else’s, threatening to boil over and spill over — because I _want_ people, because I want _Craig_ — but, of course, just as strong there’s the hesitation.

There’s the hesitation that’s there for no goddamn reason besides I was messed up when I was eleven years old, and therefore I’m messed up now.

That’s the real reason I’m drunk.

Because no matter how much I want to feel closer to Craig or to touch him or whatever else, and no matter how much I can logically reason through intimacy, I’m still scared, I’m still scarred. I’m scarred when I’m sober, and I’m scarred when I’m drunk. And it shouldn’t be this hard.

And sure, I can kiss Craig when I’m sober. I can make-out with Craig when I’m sober. But there’s this tightness in my chest - one that doesn’t necessarily come from him.

So, on the very rare occasions I allow myself to get this drunk, I enjoy it.

 

It’s just too bad I won’t remember it in the morning.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> (I wrote this a long time ago)


End file.
